Exchanges reporting crypto gains to IRS becomes tax nightmare
This is the sleep-ruiner nobody wants to talk about. It's not a flashy headline, but for anyone who's been stacking since the last cycle, the reporting side is where the real pain lives. Exchanges handing your gains to the IRS means every swap, every staking reward, every airdrop gets a paper trail. I think the smart long-term move is boring: keep clean records now, consolidate positions you actually believe in, and stop treating every trade like it's free.
Look at where the money's actually rotating. $SOL is up around 4% to roughly $122 while $ETH sits near $2,693, basically flat. My read is that when compliance gets heavier, capital leans toward the majors and the cleanest narratives, not the long tail of stuff that's hard to explain on a tax form. $BTC near $84k is the anchor here for a reason.
The risk is regulatory whiplash. Rules could shift again and retroactively bite people who thought they were fine. Compare that to a peer like $ETH, which at least has ETF structures and clearer institutional plumbing. My take: this is a year to simplify, not to get cute with 40 micro-caps nobody can verify. Boring wins when the tax man is watching.